Drones: groan!

I had been wondering how the oyks would deal with a drone.

In the period between last nest and waiting for this nest I had seen two drones on the beach.

I knew they would perceive it as an avian predator, but did not know whether they would react like they do when they see a raven (please, no, that would be a disaster as they attack them) or how they react when the sea eagle comes past (they flee).

Not sure if it was because the drone came in on the same track the sea eagle normally travels down the Basin out to the bay, but they instantly flew off nest and went a long way from nest and stayed away 10 minutes.

I think the extreme reaction to a sea eagle is because that is a threat to their safety more so than the nest. The sea eagle would be able to swoop down and take an adult oystercatcher quite easily if it wasn't paying attention. They make sure they are in the air when the sea eagle is around.

The trouble with drones is you can't find who is driving them. This one hovered over the site and I was waving at it trying to get it to move on and after two minutes they got the message. You just have to wait and see where it lands. It landed back in Bonnie Vale campgrounds, so if it had launched again we would have had to go and ask them to keep it out of the nesting zone area. Those things can travel a huge distance, so not going directly over the nesting site is no big deal.

One week today for new nest and birds are doing a good job of keeping the fox away. It visits the beach each night but you can see tracks of the fox and oyk well away from the nest site, so hopefully they can keep dealing with it successfully.

Busy day on beach today. Usual suspects. Lots of keen families asking lots of questions. Such a joy seeing how excited they are by it all. 3 teenage boys that tried a short cut through the site (3 teenage boys seems to be the magic number for those wanting to go through the fence).

This afternoon wind speeds got up to 45 kmh and someone decided to set up a beach umbrella right by the fence line. I could see what would happen so started to walk up and ended up having to catch it before it went careening through the nest site (or me). Kayakers were great today staying away from the fence line though there was a group that landed on the beach and didn't think to keep stock of things like life jackets and paddles, which blew away and they had no idea. Had to rescue a life jacket headed straight for the nest while other walkers picked up the rest and returned.